Citizens stopping SLAPPs

As I recently posted over at Art Threat, Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold has launched a $6 million lawsuit against the small, non-profit Montreal publishing house Écosociété, along with the authors of the recently published Noir Canada: Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique. Noir Canada takes a deep look at the dirty side of Canadian mining operations in Africa, pulling together allegations of various crimes committed, or committed with the support of, Canadian companies, including Barrick Gold. Barrick has taken offence to these allegations – hence the lawsuit that would take Écosociété for more than 25 times what it pulls in a year. You can read more about the actual allegations and the run up to the lawsuit at Art Threat here and here.

As the lead author of Noir Canada, Alain Deneault, and Guy Cheyney, the president of Écosociété, have made clear, they see this as a straight-up SLAPP from Barrick Gold. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation – lawsuits used by large corporations, or rich individuals, to try to overwhelm smaller critics and opponents who cannot afford fleets of corporate lawyers. Although SLAPPs largely originated in the United States, Quebec has seen a few high-profile cases in the past few years, including a widely-covered suit to silence critics of the proposed Rabaska natural gas port.

There was such outcry over the Rabaska case that the government held public consultations this spring for input on how to formulate a law regulating SLAPPs. The consultation, and proposed regulation of SLAPPs, even garnered support of all three parties in the increasingly acrimonious National Assembly. While the minister of public safety has said he is aiming to introduce legislation before the end of the current parliamentary session, the Barrick Gold suit has pushed SLAPP opponents to redouble efforts to get the bill past sooner than later.

Formed in 2007 in response to the Rabaska case, the satirically named Citoyens, taisez-vous! (Citizens, quiet down!) campaign is asking Quebeckers to join in a letter campaign to call on the government to pass a law as soon as possible, and to include five main points in the legislation (traslation mine):

Recognition of the right to public participation;

Establishiment of an emergency procedure to deny SLAPPs;

Reverse the burden of proof in order to favour victims of SLAPPs;

Financial support for vicitms of SLAPPs, reimbursement of expenditures and extra-judicial fees to those whose liberty of expression has been surpressed, and the awarding of punitive damages;

The possibility to annul gag orders in out of court settlements.

The full text of the call-out for the campaign and a sample letter are after the jump.